So, there is controversy over the fact that many American kids are not learning languages and that they should. While kids in European countries might learn 2 languages besides their mother tounge, it is uncommen to meet a bilingual american high schooler (Who grew up in a monolingual household.)Personally, I love learning languages (Though I am not too advanced in it.) I am an native english speaker, and started learning Spanish in kindergarden and 2 months ago started learning Russian. My friend is learning spanish and Farsi, and another friend of mine is learning Spanish, Mandarin, and may learn Farsi as well.(NOTE: It is a long story as to why we are able to learn these languages.)

My high school offers a few languages for us to learn: Spanish, French, German, and Mandarin. We also have a Japanese club, but they don't count... no one learns it there. So I guess what I am getting at is... What languages do you know? What did/does your high school offer? Should we give kids more oppertunity to learn langauges that are growing in importance, but are not readily available? (Korean, Arabic, Turkish, Russian, Thai, etc.)Oh, and what do you recomend I learn next? Chinese is out- I decided I could never do it. (I tried! I really did!) So, discuss.

I like to learn languages but my school only offers spanish(small private school...)

Spanish is nice but it's not a language i want to actually learn. I'd prefer French,German,Russian and Arabic(and Latin. Mandarin wouldn't be bad but it seems pretty difficult and time consuming.).

Unfortunately i don't think i can study these in HS but hopefully later on in life i can(college possibly). I love to learn languages and i know like ultra-basic german and russian/ukrainian.

Mostly from music(i listen to Neu Deutsche Harte:Rammstein,Megaherz,Eisbrecher with lyrics and english subtitles then i figure out the grammar and pronounciation. I can say a few things in German thanks to listening to the music. My russian/ukrainian would come from a Ukrainian friend who. They're almost the same).

I speak English as a second language and at home i speak my first language since my mother's english isn't that great(plus it's become a habit).

Growing up I took Latin, and, while I liked it, I never really learnt much. My first teacher was out pregnant for half the year and our supply teacher didn't know a word of latin. My next year was Latin II, but we had to cover what we missed in Latin I. The year after that our new teacher was boring and had us read out of the text book daily, and we barely learnt a thing. The year after that (my final year) our teacher was fired at the start of the year and once again, our supply teacher knew little to no latin. So, regretfully I barely learnt any latin.

我在我的中文课第二年。(I am in my second year of Chinese class) I love it, it has opened up quite a few doors for me and has been as much of an cultural experience as an learning a new language experience. I would have recommended trying to learn it, but I see you said no. I recommend French. Its beautiful, fun, and can be used in the business word like Spanish or German.

I learned English, French and German in school. There were also possibilities to learn Latin and ancient Greek, but I did not take those classes since I knew I would never meet any ancient Greeks. Ofcourse I couldn't have known about that time machine(actually I could have, by travelling back to 11 year old me, but that's besides the point) and this little issue with Alexander the Great which we had to solve.

And just because I learned them, doesn't mean I still know them. My German is just okay, but my French skills are atrocious.

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I speak Turkish. You would think that i'd be good with my native language however my Turkish is pretty bad. I tend to screw up writing(I'm just not used to writing certain letters since i'm more fluent in speaking English) and my vocabulary isn't that big.

This was due to the fact that my school, which did offer Turkish, was not very good at finding an efficient teacher. Each year we had a new teacher and two years straight, we learned absolutely nothing. I basically gave up on taking Turkish classes because it was becoming a waste of my time.

I think the best way to learn a language is to listen to the music,watch the movies,practice pronouncing(if you can pronounce, you can read). Once you start reading, you can practice your vocabulary for that language then the grammar and voila, you now speak a new language. That's what i tend to do at home. I really need to practice French pronunciation. I can only get some words. It's those damn accents.

Arkotania wrote:This was due to the fact that my school, which did offer Turkish, was not very good at finding an efficient teacher. Each year we had a new teacher and two years straight, we learned absolutely nothing. I basically gave up on taking Turkish classes because it was becoming a waste of my time..

That reminds me of my Defense against the Dark Arts classes.

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Sathera wrote:German is my native language, and I know English and Swedish pretty well (English more so than Swedish.)

I wanted to learn a Scandinavian language but then i took an arrow to the knee...(forgive me but i'm tired, it's 12 am and i'm bored).

Now seriously, i wanted to learn Finnish because i plan to visit Finland one day in the future. Of course i took one look at the letters and thought about how much a good idea it might've been to learn it. Sometimes the language can just throw you off course for a second.

Ancient greek would be fun to learn but i think i would prefer Latin. And i realized that Ottoman Turkish is kind of like Latin, it's fun to speak because it sounds all fancy-ish(Believe me, Ottoman Turkish is literally a thousand times harder then normal Turkish. It's like Modern Greek vs Ancient Greek. And Ottoman Turkish was only written in Arabic alphabets[but they Latin alphabet ottoman Turkish books], it wasn't Arabic. I've realized you could spell out Turkish words in Arabic which is exactly what happened before the alphabet was westernized)

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My school offers French, Spanish and German. I speak French semi-fluently, and some Italian and German. I guess I'd consider myself bilingual (I don't know enough Italian or German to be tri or quadlingual)

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Yuktova wrote:Learning French. It also helps that the teacher is kinda cute

Her bra size probably won't be on the final exam.

It's part of the extra credit *nods*

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Rejaina wrote:I'm trying to learn Swahili and Arabic. Any tips for me?

Arabic pronunciation isn't easy. They've got letters pronounced in ways that you've probably never heard anywhere else so it tends to take more practice getting used to it. Of course you could do it the lazy way and ignore correct pronunciation but you might end up telling people that you want to get naked with them and shave goats.

Rejaina wrote:I'm trying to learn Swahili and Arabic. Any tips for me?

Arabic pronunciation isn't easy. They've got letters pronounced in ways that you've probably never heard anywhere else so it tends to take more practice getting used to it. Of course you could do it the lazy way and ignore correct pronunciation but you might end up telling people that you want to get naked with them and shave goats.

I know there is a dirty joke about this but I can't for the life of me remember...

Panmen wrote:Should we give kids more oppertunity to learn langauges that are growing in importance, but are not readily available? (Korean, Arabic, Turkish, Russian, Thai, etc.)

Absolutely! Language learning is useful beyond the simple utility of speaking another language.

Panmen wrote:Oh, and what do you recomend I learn next? Chinese is out- I decided I could never do it. (I tried! I really did!)

If you're limited to the options at your school, German seems to be the next choice. If you have wider opprotunities, as you imply, Russian or Arabic.

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My first and strongest language is Korean, though I am also very good in English, in my opinion.I also know Mandarin from school, which I have gotten real good at the past semester, and Spanish, which is almost a given in Texas, both of which I feel comfortable speaking at now. I know others but I do not considered myself learned in a language until I can speak well with a native. Others that i do want to learn or improve at are Russian, Vietnamese, Arabic, German and Urdu. I considered learning Japanese for my uncle because I thought it would be hard and a challenge, but I realized that I do not like my uncle in the first place, and it wasn't a challenge as i thought, at least not as hard as any of the current languages I learned.

Problem being my lack of time, focus and a good quality source. My school doesn't teach many languages, only Japanese, Mandarin, Korean, Arabic, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Latin, Sign language, and Brazilian Portuguese, thought the last only goes for two levels while the others have five or four. I would take more classes, but I have no room in my high school schedule and my dad wont let me stay back to take more classes. About the last question, I see no reason why not except for maybe problems regarding resources.

Imperial Parhe wrote:My first and strongest language is Korean, though I am also very good in English, in my opinion.I also know Mandarin from school, which I have gotten real good at the past semester, and Spanish, which is almost a given in Texas, both of which I feel comfortable speaking at now. I know others but I do not considered myself learned in a language until I can speak well with a native. Others that i do want to learn or improve at are Russian, Vietnamese, Arabic, German and Urdu. I considered learning Japanese for my uncle because I thought it would be hard and a challenge, but I realized that I do not like my uncle in the first place, and it wasn't a challenge as i thought, at least not as hard as any of the current languages I learned.

Problem being my lack of time, focus and a good quality source. My school doesn't teach many languages, only Japanese, Mandarin, Korean, Arabic, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Latin, Sign language, and Brazilian Portuguese, thought the last only goes for two levels while the others have five or four. I would take more classes, but I have no room in my high school schedule and my dad wont let me stay back to take more classes. About the last question, I see no reason why not except for maybe problems regarding resources.

Funny. You state that your school doesn't teach many languages and then you write down more than 10 languages.

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